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After Q disarms her, Fin holds Sakitu firmly, whispering comforting words in her ear, till her confusion passes…when he’s sure she’s back to normal, he lessens his grip, bends his head down to give her a light kiss, murmuring, ”You gave us a scare, Hlao-roo; those bastards did a number on us, didn’t they…”
Looking to Quasit, he shakes his head, his eyes still showing apprehension. ”Not sure what those abominable spirit punks did to me…hammered me good…sucked the energy right out of me…nightmare visions…weak…fatigued…that bastard Rasputin made it clear he wants me dead…and he’s powerful enough to make it happen…
“I feel like hot garbage; can we take a short break, Q? Think I need a couple hours sleep to shake this off…”
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Quasit looks concerned, assessing the elf as she speaks.
"Yeah those were some nasty little ghosts, or whatever they were. I don't know if we can afford to wait here for a couple hours, but sit down for a few minutes here at least. Kal, can you look him over?"
Then she glances around the room. "In the meantime, the rest of us can look around in here. If this really is Rasputin's study, maybe we can find something useful."
Quasit returns to the side room. She picks up the key on the table and begins searching the drawers and otherwise looking around.
Kalchine nods, his ears flicking a few times, rotating around the room. Then they rise thoughtfully as he approaches Fin.
He reaches out and draws as much positive energy from the ground as he can to counteract the negative energy that the creatures pulsed into him.
And then some more.
His spells are getting weaker but he still has a few tricks up his sleeve.
He gets Fin pretty close to fully healed then turns his energy to himself.
He also looks to see if there is any lingering magical side effects and if he can do anything about it.
With the chaos finally subsided, Maka quickly checked in with the others, handing out hugs, kisses, and headpats to the various members of the group. After ensuring that everyone was okay, Maka rummaged through her backpack, retrieving an armful of provisions. She crossed the distance to Fin, extending her hand to offer sustenance.
“Here,” she declared, her toothy grin spread wide. “Let’s enjoy a snack while we have the chance.”
What might be a modest snack to Maka, could easily sustain someone for an entire day. Which made the speed at which she consumed it almost alarming. Dusting the crumbs off her robes, Maka belched loudly while patting her belly in contentment.
With her hunger sated, Maka joined the others in looking around.
Looking over the many books, Maka was quickly able to piece together their meaning. Maka had an innate understanding of Draconic, which some claimed was the root of all mortal languages. That might explain Maka's natural talent as a linguist, as it certainly wasn't her skill at studying.
The monk flipped through the books like a child disappointed that there weren't more pictures. Even the idea of reading through all of the books made her angry. Instead she focused on looking at the really nice looking or really old and cruddy books. Figuring that the middle looking books were probably of middle interest.
The bookshelves contain Rasputin’s personal esoteric library, including a number of infamous works on alchemy, magic, and demonology. Among their number are a magic book on summoning evil outsiders, a copy of the fifteenth-century illuminated manuscript Aurora Consurgens, the Book of Eibon, the infernal hierarchies of Johann Weyer’s De Praestigiis Daemonum and Collin de Plancy’s illustrated 1863 edition of Dictionnaire Infernal, an ancient copy of the Key of Solomon, and the Greek fire and gunpowder manual Liber Ignium, as well as more modern texts such as Aleister Crowley’s The Book of Lies and Allan Kardec’s Le Livre des Médiums. The books would be incredibly valuable to a collector--Zilvazaarat would probably take them for 1000 gp apiece.
The bedroom has a magic cloak on a hook behind the door and a magic book and a key atop the nightstand. There's a locked drawer in the desk.
The key on the nightstand doesn't fit the drawer's lock.
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She crossed the distance to Fin, extending her hand to offer sustenance.
“Here,” she declared, her toothy grin spread wide. “Let’s enjoy a snack while we have the chance.”
Fin looks up at Maka, his face haggard, but he manages a weak smile. ’Thanks, Maka, you’re a good friend…but the ring I wear sustains me without food or water…they did something to me beyond physical damage…those wounds were more…emotional…bastards…”
He puts his face back in his hands and tries to rest till Quasit says it’s time to go…
Fin looks up at Maka, his face haggard, but he manages a weak smile. ’Thanks, Maka, you’re a good friend…but the ring I wear sustains me without food or water…they did something to me beyond physical damage…those wounds were more…emotional…bastards…”
Maka wrapped her arms around Fin. "Well hugs are the best thing for that. And magic is the second best thing, we'll find something to get rid of any curse nonsense.
---
Maka was quickly sorting the books into a keep and a burn pile.
"Boy this Crowley guy sure was into this Laylah lady. Look at this weird drawing." Maka Held open a book to show some sort of imprinting of a dark haired woman. "I see it though, she's pretty in a mean way."
Maka tossed the book into the the keep pile. Numerous more books went into the burn pile before something else caught her attention. "Hey I think this books says how to make that burny powder in all the guns and stuff. Selena catch!" Maka tossed the book to Selena.
Several shelves were unceremoniously sent into the burn pile before she came across a book containing intricate illustrations of the hells and their inhabitants. Maka seemed particularly captivated by this one. "Oh wow look at this one! Did you know there's a demon that has a spider body and a cat head and a frog head and an elf head? And the elf head is a king I think? Do you think Rasputin has one of these? Do you think we'll get to fight it!?"
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Quasit pockets the key after it fails to open the drawer. ”Yeah, figures that’d be too easy…” she mutters to herself. She goes back into the main room to get her tools out of her pack, and notices Maka sorting through the books. She comes and peers down at the pictures.
”Aw, the frog head is sorta cute.” she says. She considers the renderings of about half a dozen demon lords, smirking and shaking her head. ”Obviously whoever put this book together has never actually seen a demon.” she concludes dismissively.
She picks up the Crowley book and leafs through it. ”This looks like some sort of spell book, I think. But it’s pretty different from the ones I’ve seen. Not that I’m an expert— Nevar tried a dozen times to explain the technicalities of spellcasting to me, and it always just bewildered me. And anyway, I thought there was no magic in this world?”. She regards the picture of Laylah and wrinkles her nose a bit. ”I think they just like playing dress-up together, frankly. I bet none of these spells actually work.”
"Unfortunately, part of the magics affecting you are beyond my capability to overcome. They are so unnatural that my affinity to nature does not understand how to undo them," Kalchine says apologetically.
"Selena, do you know how to sever these magics?" he asks, hopefully.
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Head still in hands, Fin nods at Karl’s words. ”Thanks, Kal…and for the healing…wouldn’t be around if not for you…”
Looking bleakly up to Quasit, he queries, ”We ready to move on, Q? From what Kal says, I’m not gonna be able to sleep this off any way, might as well press.”
He slowly rises and draws his bow. ”Which way?”
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"Well, as long as we're in here, we should check out the rest of this building. There's a couple more rooms to check out. I've got a drawer to unlock back in that bedroom, and I think I found a couple magical items. Oh, and I found a key to something, not sure what." She puts down the Book of Lies.
"You know what this reminds me of? You remember when that statue in Irrissen put some sort of magical curse on me? I thought I was just sick -- I felt like crap for days--tired all the time, kinda depressed, felt the cold more-- and then we found that woman who recognized it was a curse and she cast some sort of spell to remove it. Remember that? Too bad she's not around. Probably not going to find anyone like that around this dump."
”Aw, the frog head is sorta cute.” she says. She considers the renderings of about half a dozen demon lords, smirking and shaking her head. ”Obviously whoever put this book together has never actually seen a demon.” she concludes dismissively.
Maka nodded happily in agreement about the frog head looking cute, but a wave of shock and disgust overtook her at the idea of the author having never seen a demon. "NO! People wouldn't do that would they!? A whole book of lies!"
Nevar tried a dozen times to explain the technicalities of spellcasting to me, and it always just bewildered me.
"I get it. When I was young I had to train with Master G'ail to see if my abilities were arcane. He started going on about letters in math and then star positions in math and I didn't know what to do. I just bit him."
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"A whole book of lies!"
Quasit raises a bemused eyebrow as she attempts to determine whether Maka may be engaging her in facetious banter versus actually being shocked, SHOCKED, that grifters might inhabit the world of academic multiplanar publishing.
" I just bit him."
Quasit nods sagely. "Yeah, that was my response too. Oddly, it just made him want to teach me more." She glances up and away at some fun memory on the ceiling.
Then she recalls why she came into the room. "Hang on, I gotta unlock this drawer in the bedroom." She takes her lock-picking tools back into the side room and attempts to jimmy the drawer open.
Quasit is easily able to pick the lock on the drawer and open it. It's crammed full of notebooks and papers. The notebooks have the name "Nikolai Tesla" written on the front, while several of the papers have "Viktor Miloslav" on them--including one with some kind of black-and-white painting of that closely resembles the corpse you recovered earlier.
"I mean, come on! I get newspapers being a lot of lies. That's just a handful of pages and those are mostly made by bad people funded by nobles. But a whole BOOK!? About learning! That's so much effort." Maka waved her arms around as smoke started to billow from her nostrils.
"And then someone could read it, for nothing! And people could just go on reading it and wasting time forever! It's just so evil! I bet an actual devil wrote this, or a witch, some sort of professional bad person." Maka's fiery braid of hair practically sparked with frustration.
Turning the book over in her hands, Maka considered burning it, but the thought of how cute the frog head was stopped her. "I mean, I guess the drawings are still neat. Maybe we just add a warning?"
Maka steadied her breathing as she attempted to calm herself by watching Quasit pick the draw lock.
Quasit nods sagely. "Yeah, that was my response too. Oddly, it just made him want to teach me more." She glances up and away at some fun memory on the ceiling.
"Well it sure didn't make Master G'ail want to teach me!" Maka said with a toothy grin.
"Unfortunately, part of the magics affecting you are beyond my capability to overcome. They are so unnatural that my affinity to nature does not understand how to undo them," Kalchine says apologetically.
"Selena, do you know how to sever these magics?" he asks, hopefully.
Selena examines Fin with detec magic, "Many curses can not
be dispelled. I can not break it fight now but I might be able to figure out something. It would be handy if we had a book or scroll on the subject or even just a break enchantment spell. We will have to ask our merchant friend if we don't find anything here."
The notebooks attributed to "Nikola Tesla" contain (in Russian) writings and drawings of a machine to facilitate communication with another world. The papers include some detailed blueprints labeled (also in Russian) the "World Engine" and "World Anchors". The World Anchors seem to match the description of the strange machines Maka saw in some of the corner towers, which matches what the blueprints say about needing four of them. They apparently connect somehow with the World Engine to... do something. The blueprints don't say a lot about the purpose of everything, just how to make them, though you think they'd help some with attempts to change or disable the World Anchors.
They do have a very clear warning that suddenly stopping one of the World Anchors without the proper shutdown procedure would likely have severe consequences. A mentioned safety feature is that they will reset themselves if their settings are not all changed the same way before an hour is up.
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Quasit stuffs the notebooks and blueprints into her backpack.
Quasit re-enters the main room. She holds up the picture she found. "Ladies and gentleman, our one-legged hunchbacked corpse has a name: Viktor Miroslav!""
"And I think I found the blueprints to his machine. I think it works to somehow move things to other worlds or dimensions or something, using that purple lightning, but I gotta admit, this stuff is pretty complicated and technical. There's massive amounts of electrical power going through these things, and one wrong step in turning them off could be... well, really bad."
"There's four separate components in 4 of the guard towers around this place, and they all need to be successfully turned off within an hour of one another, or they'll reset and we'll have to start over. So, we'll need to take out the teams in the 4 towers quickly and quietly, and then work quick to deactivate the machines."
"I'm good with locks and mechanical traps, but I've never deactivated a machine like this. So I think we still need to put Viktor back together and bring him to the tombstone fairy to be brought back to life, and hopefully he'll show his appreciation by helping us succeed. If he does, it will definitely improve our chances of getting this right. If he doesn't... well... we might need to get creative."
She goes to a window and pulls aside the shades just enough to peek outside, trying to gauge whether the searchlights are still combing the area or have gone back to normal.
"You know..." she muses as she looks around out the window, "It seems like when that image of Rasputin shows up to mess with us, he hangs around long enough to cast a big spell, then vanishes. I mean, he could have hung around after he summoned the murder kids, or the corpse bonfire monster, but he didn't. And definitely not because he had anything to fear from us. I think he's stuck in the other world, and has limits of what he can do. And I bet he wouldn't still be in that burned out temple, if we went back through it."
"That sounds like a lot, but at least we know what to do now." Maka replied as she attempted to open the remaining door. A blast of fire and a quick kick awaited the door if it provided any resistance.
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"You know what this reminds me of? You remember when that statue in Irrissen put some sort of magical curse on me? I thought I was just sick -- I felt like crap for days--tired all the time, kinda depressed, felt the cold more-- and then we found that woman who recognized it was a curse and she cast some sort of spell to remove it. Remember that? Too bad she's not around. Probably not going to find anyone like that around this dump."
Fin nods his head slightly, murmuring, ”Aye, I recall…dark days…”
"You know..." she muses as she looks around out the window, "It seems like when that image of Rasputin shows up to mess with us, he hangs around long enough to cast a big spell, then vanishes. I mean, he could have hung around after he summoned the murder kids, or the corpse bonfire monster, but he didn't. And definitely not because he had anything to fear from us. I think he's stuck in the other world, and has limits of what he can do. And I bet he wouldn't still be in that burned out temple, if we went back through it."
He nods again. ”Going thru that temple would be a good way to approach the camp…it’d also gimme a chance to see what was shooting at us from the tower that I likely killed there, if Rasputin is indeed not there…
“We need to move quickly though…I’m dead tired…”
"That sounds like a lot, but at least we know what to do now." Maka replied as she attempted to open the remaining door. A blast of fire and a quick kick awaited the door if it provided any resistance.
Fin draws his bow, covering Maka as she blows the hatch, so to speak…
Kalchine shakes his head and his ears droop in worry. "That is going to be a difficult task to accomplish at the moment. Getting from one tower to another and dealing with all the troops there will be a challenge, let alone getting from one to another without the entire camp coming after us," he says.
"But, what is difficult is not impossible and if it is possible and must be done, then it must be done," he continues philosophically.
"We must properly prepare before making the attempt."
Maka blasts the door in to reveal a room dominated by a large round table. Eight chairs surround the table, and in each sits the dessicated corpse of a nobleman... and slightly above each corpse floats a ghostly replica of the corpse. All eight of them have unnaturally long tongues, which are wrapped around a ninth ghost--that of a noblewoman seemingly frozen in an expression agony--floating above the table.
Six of the ghostly nobles turn towards you, releasing their tongues' grip on the other ghost.
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Sighing heavily at the sight of more ghostly creatures, the Elf hauntingly shakes his head but focuses on the task at hand…
Curious about the ghosts that remain ‘feeding’, Fin moves 5’ and fires a barrage at one of the two ghosts feeding off the noblewoman spirit…if the first drops, he’ll target the other feeding ghost with the remainder of his shots…
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Sakitu steps up on her tiptoes to peek over Quasit's shoulder. The room full of ghosts makes her shudder. "Ok. I know. This might work." She points towards the back corner of the room that she can see then encants a few magic words. Something that almost looks like a small little glowing ember streaks from her finger and slams into the back wall. It bursts into a giant fireball of flame.
Selena cautions the others as she casts her spell, "I bet the trapped ghost is one we want to speak to. It seems like an enemy of the others."
Fin takes out two of the creatures with his arrows. Sakitu's blast seems much less effective, though they take some damage.
Three of them float towards the doorway, completely ignoring the undead. They stop about 10' from the door and lash out with their disturbingly long tongues. One instead floats through the wall and attacks Chest Thumper.
The two remaining in the room tighten their tongues around the ghost above the table. It screams, sending terror through those who hear it.
Maka dodged several of the tongues before she disappeared and reappeared in a pillar of blue flame that engulfed several of the ghosts and ghouls.
Kalchine is not moved by the scream but he moves closer to the combat, not to fight but to heal.
He reaches out to pulse some positive energy into Sakitu.
Bulvi focused his attacks on the same ghost as Quasit and Chest Thumper. The large man looked in frustration at his friends, he'd leave it to those better equipped to heal them while he focused on stopping more harm being done.
He gave one last parting slash before stepping up behind Maka to block the advance of more corporeal enemies.
Your attacks destroy three of the ghostly beings. One of them tries attacking Maka with with tongue and its touch.
Maka is far too evasive for it.
The other two continue squeezing the ghost above the table with their tongues, and said ghost continues wailing.
Not being as nimble as Quasit Bulvi relied on his skill with the blade, his longsword darting forward around Maka to hit the ghostly figure behind her.
Selena commands her minions to start knocking things over, less to destroy and more to disrupt anything that might be impacting those holding the captive.